Posted on 05/20/2005 7:09:57 AM PDT by wjersey
The Navy sent the retired USS America aircraft carrier to its final resting place at the bottom of the sea Saturday, in a closely guarded series of explosions that the Navy didn't announce until days later.
The 84,000-ton, 1,048-foot warship, which served the Navy for 32 years, thus became the first U.S. carrier to be sunk since 1951, and the largest warship ever sunk.
"Explosions were internal to the ship and allowed a controlled flooding," said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman with the Naval Sea Systems Command. She declined to say where the ship now sits, except that it was 50 nautical miles - or about 58 miles - off the coast, and more than 6,000 feet below the surface.
The Navy previously said the final explosions would be off North Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
For curiosity's sake, I hope it was filmed and eventually reaches the Discovery or History channel.
They couldn't dismantle it and use it for scrap metal?!?
Seems like a colossal waste to me.
They were doing experiments, methinks.
Environmental regulations in the US are such that scrapping the ship would turn out to be unbelievably expensive.
Only place left in the world where a ship can be scrapped and make money off it is India (you may have seen the documentaries on it, they drag the ships up on the beach); however, it would be extremely easy for, say, Chicom agents to crawl all over the ship and examine it if that were done.
What a beautiful ship that was. Too bad it met a fate such as this.
My thought too. Probably would cost more in labor to dismantle it but it surely would have made a nice floating prison or homeless shelter, etc.
The tests were to study the effect of certain types of explosives (weapons) on the hull. What they learn from this will save lives on future ships, probably as early as the USS George H. W. Bush, currently under construction. Certainly not a colossal waste.
Exactly correct. The America has had constant problems with the plates it's made of, high levels of corrosion or something like that. Take heart though, the data gathered will be used to develop the next generation carrier class, which will be better protected as a result. Gone maybe, but she served the cause to end.
I agree. I hate to see perfectly good ships sunk like that. They should use them as museums...
It's too bad that they used internal explosions. I think it would be a lot more interesting if they attacked it with harpoon and tomahawk missles, perhaps while having operable phalanx systems mounted on the carrier in order simulate a real life scenario. More importantly, I just would have liked to have watched such an event.
Ditto, doesn't make sense not to salvage something, what a waste of taxpayers money.
From the article.
I'm sure it was filmed, but I doubt the Navy wants that video to get into the hands of our enemies. It might be a nice training video on where to hit our carriers to sink them. I would love to see it too, but don't count on it.
Should've mothballed it. In a desperate time,
it would have been useful just being towed around
somewhere as another landing platform/cargo ship.
Or even been given to Japan or India for their fleets.
It will make for a beautiful fish habitat.
You know, fish? Things in nature that serve a useful purpose, like providing food for other living things.
I'm willing to bet that every bit of classified commo gear was removed from it, regardless of any public statements.
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